coils

[BIG CHEVY]

My friend has a k5 blazer. It has a 350 in it and it sings a little better song than stock....but not too much. He is installing an accel brute thunder coil in his distributor. Says hotter spark will take it up a level. Can someone really tell me what this coil is actually gonna improve....if anything? Just curious. I dont really get the whole msd thing. A good engine hitting a painful rev limiter is just horrible. Ties for most horrible with the import mufflers. What will this coil do? Cause if it will improve.......im goin to buy one.

[VileZambonie]

Don't just upgrade the coil. You will start melting caps and carbon buttons. If you're going to upgrade the ignition system, do the whole thing.

[The dream]

is the MSD the better ignition system? will it make a diference on a 350?

[Irish_Alley]

on a stock 350 imo its not worth the upgrade. you can get hotter spark just by changing plugs and the gap. maybe your friend has a cam or his timing is better than yours

[BIG CHEVY]

Dont think he knows better. Just tryin to investigate before we get crazy on a witch hunt that melts caps and buttons. I think hei works pretty good. Does msd even have value in a beefed up motor? Id think chevy woulda changed to a style of it if it was any kind of better.

[Grim 82]

I use an MSD Streetfire HEI and noticed power gains over stock, but I upgraded the whole system. Better conducting spark plug wires and a hotter coil will give a stronger and more consistent spark, which allows you to use a bigger spark plug gap. It starts much better with it also. Unless you re-curve the distributor and upgrade every component in the system you won't see anything too exciting as far as performance gains.

[VileZambonie]

GM HEI's aren't worth putting any money into or tweaking anymore. Those days are gone.  You can buy an entire new aftermarket performance unit cheap enough or upgrade your ignition system all together. Will it make a difference? Absolutely. I've posted the details many times on here but it's one of the most overlooked items and probably one of the first things you should do. Ask anyone on here who has an upgraded ignition system what a difference it made and ask anyone who just tried a different coil and they'll probably tell you 3 weeks later they had to replace their ignition module and a month later their pick up coil and a month later their distributor cap.... etc

[BIG CHEVY]

perfect..........exactly what im looking for. is there a chance i could get listed all parts that make up the complete ignition system? (if it aint like 75 of em of course) if a super coil will burn up these items......my next question is what parts or components keep that from happening? why doesnt the super coil burn up the components after the upgrade?  i must understand the initial hei system knowledge .....then i must soak in  the upgraded options for the ignition system knowledge. i know em i think...but if i left anything out and things went bad id feel dumb. vile.......i promise i search all my questions out a lot but i think either the search on here hates me or is more complicated than i think it is. so feel free to put links to previous posts if its faster. i know ur style.  i dont mean to ask too many questions.....but id bet fair money im one of the hungriest guys on here for knowledge.   FEED ME SEYMOUR!!!

[VileZambonie]

That's great, seek knowledge and know where to find it. There's a lot of different ways to go. If you just want a cheap upgraded distributor look on eBay for sbc hei. If you want to get an entire ignition system Summit carries their brand which carries the same warranty as MSD and I've heard many good things about for less than MSD. I have friends who are using them without issue. I prefer MSD because they haven't let me down (yet) and I say yet because everything breaks sooner or later, we just hope for later. Nevertheless I've put my MSD's through some brutality and they're unbeatable until you move onto coil on plug.

[Grim 82]

The parts list is short. If you go with an MSD or similar HEI distributor you will get all of your ignition parts in one ready to install package. Without some good quality plug wires you can't get the fire to the plug, so those are also a must have item. With these components you can widen the gap on the plugs, and that pretty much sums up what it takes to upgrade your ignition system, aside from control boxes, etc., which I have not yet experimented with. I think it's a worthwhile upgrade, and with the prices the way they are now, I would buy a new distributor with all new parts before spending any time and money replacing a pickup coil or module, etc. I had my MSD run in an old school Sun distributor machine to change the curve and had a better adjustable vacuum advance module installed and set up and it made a huge difference.

[1979C20]

When you upgrade your ignition system you can advance your timing some which gives you a little better performance.

[roadrage41]

Also keep in mind that plug wires and plugs are a part of your ignition system. The budget wires and champion plugs work fine in my driver, but I've got msd wires and ngk plugs for my 5.3

[VileZambonie]

People, back away from the whoop la. It's all about control, and precision. In the amount of time you spend sitting on the toilet reading a magazine your ignition system has worked about as hard as you have your entire life! Now to put this into perspective and understand the primary controls of your ignition system control not only the saturation of the coil with it's amplitude but the timing and firing of the coils secondary which is dependant on the easy stuff that you control : Cap,rotor, wires, plugs and all of the associated tweaks. Make a baseline and a blueprint and you can factualize your gains.